Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak on the report of the Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport, on Climate change and the Australian agricultural sector. This is a very important report of the committee. It highlights what this ill-thought-through emissions trading scheme will do to Australia generally, and, can I say as a parochial Queenslander, to my home state specifically. One of the very significant parts of the Queensland economy is the beef cattle industry. Under the Rudd government’s proposal on emissions trading that industry will be excluded until 2015, but then there is no indication of what happens after that.

People in that industry are petrified that the beef cattle industry will be brought into the emissions trading scheme at that time. As someone said at a Senate inquiry which I was attending, this could well turn Australia into a nation of vegetarians because we will simply not be able to afford red meat if it is going to be taxed at the rate that a lot of people in that industry envisage when the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, has her way with an emissions trading scheme. The beef cattle industry in Queensland is very significant. It employs hundreds of meat workers, and I cannot understand why the meat workers union advocates on the other side of the chamber are not standing up with me demanding that some certainty be given to the Queensland beef cattle industry today, not in 2015—so tell them today what they have got to plan for and that fills those people with horror.

The beef cattle industry employs thousands of unionists in meatworks throughout my state of Queensland and they are likely to be thrown on the unemployment scrapheap. What do we hear from the so-called saviours of the working man who sit opposite us in the chamber? Absolute silence—fall over and get in behind Mr Rudd. If you want a job in the government that brings power and money, do what he says and forget about the workers that you are supposed to be representing. All of those meatworkers should really have a look at what is going to happen to the beef cattle industry in 2015—and it is not just Rockhampton and Townsville; it is all of those places in the north and north-west of Queensland that rely on the world’s best beef cattle industry for a living.

This report of the standing committee deals with other industries as well. What becomes clear is that the emissions trading scheme will be a tax on many things. It will be a tax on fuel. It will be a tax on our electricity. It will be a tax on manufacturing.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Fertiliser.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will be a tax on fertiliser—thank you, Senator Williams.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Transport.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Transport—most decidedly. All of the things that support agricultural industries in Australia will be taxed and will be subject to the direct and indirect impacts of the Rudd government’s ill-thought-through emissions trading scheme.

We could all say: ‘Yes, if we’ve got to, we’ll bear some pain to save the world. We don’t like it, and perhaps we could do it a better way’—and I am sure we could—‘but we’ll have a second thought about it.’ But what we are going to do is export all the jobs in Australian meatworks and agriculture to foreign countries that will not have an ETS. We know Indonesia is not going to have an ETS. We know South America is not going to have an ETS. Who knows what the United States is going to do? We have heard a lot of heroic words from President Obama, but we will see what happens there. The Indian and Chinese economies are not going to be subjected to the taxes that Australian industries will be, so Australian industries will simply become unprofitable.

And what of all those good members of the AWU, with Big Bill Ludwig and the AWU leadership up in Queensland supposedly looking after them? Why aren’t they out there? I do not want to malign Mr Bill Ludwig, who has said a few things about this. Didn’t he call Professor Garnaut a wacko?

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Williams interjecting—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And no offence to others who might have similar nicknames! In the case of those others it is of course a term of endearment. But I do not think Mr Bill Ludwig, the AWU heavyweight in Queensland, was meaning it in so friendly a way when he was speaking about Professor Garnaut because I think Mr Ludwig—unlike his son, who is a minister in the Rudd government—does seem to understand that the ETS will cost jobs in the Australian agricultural industries in which there are a lot of AWU members. It will cost jobs in the sugar industry, in which there are a lot of AWU members. It will certainly cost jobs, as I have just mentioned, in the meat-processing industry. Where is the clamour from the so-called guardians of the working man who sit opposite us? Not a word do we hear from them, and they are going to subject these people to being thrown onto the unemployment scrapheap. As this report points out, agricultural industries are price takers and they are also at the end of the food chain. If the cost of transport is higher because of the ETS, which it will be, then farmers just have to bear it, lump it. They are the ones that are really going to be impacted by climate change.

The climate change report goes wider than that and deals with the impact of the changing climate on Australia. That is of course something that the coalition, including me and many others, are watching very closely. That is why we think Northern Australia has a big future as the north gets wetter and the south of our continent gets drier. That is why the coalition have put such a lot of effort into making forward plans, not for next year or the year after but for 10, 20, 30 or 50 years time. That is why we have had that visionary approach.

While I and my colleagues are trying to work out how we can open up new agricultural lands in North Queensland, regrettably the state government in Queensland is doing everything in its power to stop the development of agricultural industries in the north of Queensland. There are very sound proposals for water storage on the Flinders River up near Richmond and Hughenden. They could open up vast new areas of productive agricultural land and they would be guaranteed water as the north gets wetter. But what does the Queensland government do? What sort of vision and leadership does Premier Anna Bligh show? Absolutely nothing—stop any thought, stop any proposal and stop any activity that might look at the sustainable use of water storage along the Flinders River near Richmond and Hughenden. That would provide food not only for Australia but for those 80 million new people that are coming into the world every year, mostly in Third World and underdeveloped countries, and who desperately need our food. We are getting no leadership from the Queensland government on this and we are getting little support from the federal Labor government. The report of this committee does highlight some of those activities that will affect the agricultural industries with climate change. (Time expired)